


Upside Down

by hitchcock_winter



Category: Emergency! (TV 1972)
Genre: AO3 exclusive, Angst, Another bad run, Johnny Whump, M/M, Pining, Roy loves Johnny, This ship is my jam, Unrequited Love, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:54:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26901703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitchcock_winter/pseuds/hitchcock_winter
Summary: Johnny had been thrown in the air but it was Roy who was still hurtling, still dizzy and sick and who’d never find sure footing again.
Relationships: Roy DeSoto & Johnny Gage, Roy DeSoto/Johnny Gage
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22





	Upside Down

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another hot mess of run-on sentences. I'm all about this ship right now. Thanks again to Guardy for checking things over before I post. Check 'em out on Tumblr as johnnys-green-pen.

It had happened at the fire. That was the way things went with them. Always at a fire. Or dangling on the end of a rope. Or bobbing in the water, thrown up against the rocks by waves that just didn’t give a damn that they were living and breathing and one last slam could be the end of it all. 

Johnny was caught during a flashover that had thrown him over the deck and had blown apart every single piece of Roy as he watched. Johnny landed on his stomach, skidding, on the grass below, the back of his turnout on fire and his body a crumpled child’s toy, one of Jennifer’s dollies, discarded on the floor in a tangle of limbs and stillness. 

When Roy remembered to breathe again he shouted Johnny’s name, or he thought he had, it was the only word that mattered in that moment and maybe even the only word that would ever matter again.

He didn’t wait for Marco to finish hosing the flames away before he was assessing Johnny, feeling his limbs, making sure he was less ragdoll and more human before turning him over. 

Johnny’s face was dark with soot and blood and his eyes were closed, his mouth parted slightly but there were no breaths, no air, Johnny was dead and in that moment Roy knew that he was dead, too. That if there was no Johnny, there was no Roy, not really, not one that had insides, one that lived and breathed and moved ahead and moved on because if there was no Johnny there was nothing to move toward. 

His mouth-to-mouth was automatic, methodical, hiding the fact that he was liquid on the inside and that tears were coming to the outside and that a realization had fallen on him, hard, heavy like a mudslide that he couldn’t crawl out of, dragging him under, stealing his breath if he had any left after giving it all to Johnny now.

Chet brought the equipment and took over mouth-to-mouth and 16’s paramedics pulled Roy away and Roy sat, stunned, stunned that Johnny was dying or dead and even more stunned that Johnny was maybe his entire world.

But it didn’t take long for Johnny to breathe on his own, and he just needed some oxygen and a precautionary IV, and Roy needed even more oxygen but he couldn’t tell, he couldn’t say why, so he sat without it instead. Roy ended up riding in with him, couldn’t tear his eyes away because he had just found out that Johnny was the most important thing on earth and that his world had turned upside down. Johnny had been thrown in the air but Roy was still falling, still hurtling, still dizzy and sick and knew he’d never find sure footing again.

They’d gone to the hospital and Johnny had some more oxygen and a handful of stitches and finished the IV. And now Johnny was cleared for duty, light duty, duty that did not involve smoke because they only had a couple hours left and Johnny had managed to convince Brackett it’d be okay somehow, some way, with some pleading and some _right, Roy?_ and a little bit of whining, their very own mangy pup who knew exactly how to get what he wanted. That was the way things went with them. 

Now they had just crawled into the squad, both from the same side, Roy sliding down to the driver’s seat from the passenger door. Roy was staring at his hands, gripping the steering wheel tight, eyes on the soot he had missed after hurriedly washing in the washroom, only he was seeing Johnny on the ground and Johnny not breathing and Johnny slipping away from him at the very second he realized he needed Johnny more than anything. 

“Hey, you okay?” Johnny’s raspy voice cut through the silence of the cab. His head was tilted, one leg up against the dash in that way that Roy hated, because of the dirt, and loved, because it was Johnny.

Was he okay?

He was never going to be okay.

He was heavy on the squad’s seat, his leadened arms tugging out of his sockets as he squeezed the steering wheel. He was frozen. Everything had changed. He couldn’t bring himself to move, to blink, was he even breathing anymore?

It had crept up on him slowly, he could see that now, an imperceptible drifting away from shore that went unnoticed except the occasional dropping of his stomach, here and there, when there were ripples or waves or if the wind blew just right. He’d been able to ignore it until now. Ignore that feeling he got when Johnny finally showed up at his barbeque, that was less _hey there pal_ and more _don’t you ever leave again_. Ignore the sting in his chest when Johnny’d laugh at something he said, smile lighting up his face brighter and more dangerously than the flashover that had nearly stolen him away.

Johnny had almost died before. Roy had been sick with worry before. This wasn’t an original story, it was a sequel, a series. They were on a carousel going round-and-round and the only thing that was certain was Johnny’s tilt-a-whirl grin and that Roy would always have to worry, would always revisit the cold fear at the bottom of his being. But now the ride was slanting, and Roy was holding on for dear life, and if he slipped he would never land because he was already freefalling and somehow this was _worse_ , it hurt so much more.

He couldn’t look over at Johnny, because he was fighting back tears and a goddamned mortar full of emotions he’d never known could be jammed up together, shame and shock and was this how it felt to have your heart dragged out of your chest because everything about his very self had been torn up and ripped down and nothing would ever be the same again. 

“Roy, what is it?” Johnny’s leg came down and he turned his body toward Roy, concern making his smoke-strained voice even huskier. 

At the fire, Roy had looked down at Johnny, smudged with soot and smeared with blood and yet still pale, so cold, oh god he was dead and he knew he’d give anything and everything in that second if Johnny could be okay. Anything and everything including his own life, even if it meant leaving Joanne husbandless, his kids fatherless, it wasn’t even a decision, it was a truth, and the truth was Roy was in love with Johnny.

Imperfect, scrappy, selfish and selfless Johnny. Skinny, stubborn, young and yet too-old Johnny. Johnny with the brown eyes that were hot caramel with joy and cool iron with anger. Johnny with the shaggy dark hair that was always too long and curled around the sharp lines of his face in different ways every damned day. 

Johnny, who ran hot with pride and cold with hurt, when someone struck too deep, penetrated through his inconsequential front and skimmed his insecurities. Johnny, who should have rubbed Roy in all the wrong ways but had been magnetizing him to his core all along, bringing him closer and closer, until there was no other centre that mattered.

Johnny, who was staring at him, brow wrinkled in concern and mouth parted in a way that reminded Roy of Johnny on the ground and almost-dead. Johnny, who needed a response right-fucking-now or he’d be running into Rampart for a doctor. Because Johnny was his best friend, and was always looking out for him, always throwing himself head first into the deep if it meant that he’d keep Roy out of danger.

There was no way Johnny could save him this time.

Roy cleared his throat. “I… I was just really worried this time,” he finally said. It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t even close to a lie.

“Oh.” Johnny’s face melted into something apologetic, something softer and warmer and something that had him biting a little at his bottom lip. Because of course Johnny would feel bad about that. But then he grinned, a half-crooked grin that didn’t quite meet his eyes and Roy knew was for his sake. “You know I wouldn’t leave you all alone with Brice.”

Roy tried to laugh, but he was numb and he was on fire all at the same time, and still he gripped the steering wheel and still he couldn’t look at Johnny directly in the eyes.

“I…” Johnny could sense something was wrong, Roy knew he could. “I’m fine, Roy. I promise. Are you?”

And what hurt the most wasn’t that the world was completely upside down, wasn’t that he was careening, falling, in a way that could only end with him in pieces all over the unforgiving ground. What hurt the most was that there was nothing he could do. Everything had changed and yet nothing could. He wasn’t supposed to be in love with Johnny, he couldn’t be. Being in love with Johnny meant he was defective, malformed, wrong. Being in love with Johnny was at odds with being in love with his wife, and his children. Being in love with Johnny meant that the life he’d worked so hard to build wasn’t as fulfilling as it was yesterday, and that was shattered glass in his stomach, scraping him from the inside out.

“I’ll be okay, Johnny,” He knew he was lying, and he hated to lie, but just like Johnny’d keep him out of danger, Roy would lie and cheat and steal and beg if it meant that the wrinkle of concern in Johnny’s brows would fall away, if he could soften those edges of worry around his mouth into that tilt-a-whirl grin, if he could lighten the darkness under those caramel-and-iron eyes.

That was the way things went with them.

Roy started the ignition, and pulled out of Rampart’s emergency parking lot, and he felt his heart squeeze as he wondered how he could get through the minutes, the hours, the days of the rest of his life.


End file.
